DMG Audio Equilibrium is an extremely transparent-sounding EQ. The best digital EQ IMO.

DMG Trackcomp - includes (very good) emulations but the default DMG mode is a really good purely digital compressor.

I generally agree with your quote about digital, and apart from a few rare exceptions, I find most analog emulations to be snake oil. They're ruining so many productions and records with rolled off high end, smeared transients and aliasing that people simply aren't hearing for some reason. Digital doesn't have to do any of that.

DMG Audio Equilibrium is an extremely transparent-sounding EQ. The best digital EQ IMO.

DMG Trackcomp - includes (very good) emulations but the default DMG mode is a really good purely digital compressor.

I generally agree with your quote about digital, and apart from a few rare exceptions, I find most analog emulations to be snake oil. They're ruining so many productions and records with rolled off high end, smeared transients and aliasing that people simply aren't hearing for some reason. Digital doesn't have to do any of that.

SNAKE OIL?!?!?!

kidding lol.

Personally I just realized that analog emulation is kind of useless except when it comes to color. We're all listening in digital anyway, so why go back?

Well, real high-end analog gear sounds amazing and I think way surpasses digital. Combine that gear with top converters and the results are stunning. But, and here's the kicker, plugins often do a poor job at emulating this and you end up with what could be described as clichés of "the analog effect" rather than the big, punchy and, yes, transparent sound that high end analog can give you.

So given that, I often take a "pure digital" approach when it comes to plugins with just the odd bit of saturation etc when needed.

Personally I just realized that analog emulation is kind of useless except when it comes to color. We're all listening in digital anyway, so why go back?

We're not listening in digital , even as the media we peruse is digital. I know that you didn't mean that, but listening in digital isn't plausible. Try "listening to digital audio". To me this assumes the analog part. Listening "in" means to me that somehow the listening is happening in the digital domain. A digital tool can do that, in consuming a digital audio stream. Ears of course cannot.

Colour, yes, but there's also analog type behaviour. There are many bad sides of digital, though they are more or less outweighed by the very strong upsides and can for the most part be avoided. But also analog has upsides and there's nothing wrong trying to emulate these with digital techniques as long as they're not compromising the many upsides of digital audio.

The notion to embrace digital tools being just that is perfectly valid and sound.